FatBigot

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I would have thought that an "eat your own dogfood" rule would come under extreme pressure when there is a need to do things quickly. If you need a high speed rail line, you can either develop your own steel...

That brings us to the problem of the tyranny of the do-gooder, as expressed by C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to...

What is the nature of the interaction of the Alfar magic and iron? Is it similar to conductors and electromagnetic energy in that it represents a change of impedance that can adsorb or reflect the energy, depending on a number...

Surely a key issue will be the demographics. World population projections for then vary between 8 & 16 billion people (Wikipedia). That will make a huge difference to the kind of planet we live on. Unfortunately there are many strands...

One problem with micro-payments is the imposition of rich-world norms for how much to pay for something.From our perspective, if you can afford a computer and internet service, then paying an extra 1p a page for content is possible. If...

You ask the question "One thing I still don't get though, is why BLUE HADES and/or DEEP SEVEN haven't wiped out humanity yet, or at least put the shaved apes in their proper place. You'd think they'd be getting awfully...

Any chance of what John le Carré did in The Secret Pilgrim? Find a narrative device that allows an assembly of short stories and vignettes that include a number of characters (some new) and based in different parts of the...

Concerning space colonies: Wouldn't people living there have to accept a degree of control that would be repugnant to us today? Presumably reproduction would have to be carefully controlled, with females required to have a certain number of children, possibly...

We know that a lot of this equipment is ex-military. However, according to http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/militarized-night-ferguson " In many instances, the receipt of these military-grade weapons is contingent on their use within a calendar year." Is this a contributing factor to the...

One possibility that self driving cars/trucks produce is the implementation of the Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. What usages would there be for a vehicle that would slavishly follow it's owner wherever possible? Obviously any real-life implementation would be...

One question I have is whether there was any influence from Tom Holt's "The Portable Door" (and it's successors) on the Laundry series? They both take "Magic exists" as a starting point and build a world from there. Tom Holt...

I think that any serious discussion of this problem has to take account of what happens when democracy really fails. Professor Matthew Flinders (http://www.shef.ac.uk/politics/staff/matthewflinders) was attached to the UK embassy when he saw the riots between Thailand's reds and yellows....

Comment Threads

An example: check out food imports from Ireland to Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution, then remember the cottier class who paid their rent in farm labour to raise that food subsisted entirely on potatoes and buttermilk....

Yes, but was that necessary for industrialization? Another way of asking this would be: would industrialization have happened even without that potato. It's like the discussion we had above about Mormon farmers. They were crucial to settling the West in our timeline, but I already demonstrated that there were alternatives other timelines could have pursued. I don't know enough about the history you mention to propose alternatives, but they probably exist?...

Not just things like the potato. Lumber was extremely important for things like masts — so much so that the British worked hard at organizing commercial lumbering to create an industry that could provide them masts and spars. (Especially important after Napoleon blockaded the Baltic and the American Rebellion limited access/control to former colonies like New England.)...